QD4 is a file manager style utility for Windows 95 aimed primarily at power users such as computer technicians or anyone who needs to manage large numbers of files and folders efficiently and reliably. QD4 leans towards the keyboard as the main input device as this seems to be more efficient. Using common sense keyboard commands such as C for Copy, M for Move, R for Rename etc enables the user to get the job done very quickly.
The power comes from the ability to decide how you want QD4 to handle certain situations before they occur. For example, when copying a number of files from one location to another, you can define in advance that existing files should only be overwritten if the source files are newer than the existing files. Alternaltively, you can say that no existing files should be overwritten. You can even tell QD4 to ignore any errors such as corrupt files. Once these options have been selected you can set the operation in motion and go do something else. When QD4 has finished you can go over the event log and check that everything went ok. You can even perform a simulation to make sure that you're not going to overwrite anything you didn't expect to.
History
QD4 is a direct decendant of QD3, a DOS based version of the same utility. QD3 basically was written to incorporate the best features from Norton Commander and XTree Gold, two very popular file management tools of their day. QD3 took the dual window look of Norton Commander and the easy keyboard commands of XTree Gold to make one very powerful package.
Then Windows 95 came along with it's long filenames and really threw a spanner in the works for QD3 and most other DOS file managers. For a while I played around with QD3 and eventually got it semi-compatible with 95 but it became un-reliable and I realised I would have to re-write QD3 in the Windows environment if it was ever going to succeed. I attempted this re-write a number of times before I finally got something that had all the right ingredients.
QD4 is still in it's infancy, there are a few bugs, the program crashes every now and then and there's still a few more features that need to go in but it's getting there.
